/*
**    Copyright (C) 2003-2011 Institute for Systems Biology
**                            Seattle, Washington, USA.
**
**    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
**    modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
**    License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
**    version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
**
**    This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
**    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
**    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
**    Lesser General Public License for more details.
**
**    You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
**    License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
**    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307  USA
*/

package org.systemsbiology.util;

/**
 * Author: anorberg
 * Created on: Nov 9, 2010
 */

/**
 * Generic interface defining an object implementing the Strategy pattern, generally for the purpose of filtering
 * certain items out of a dataset.
 * @param <T> Type to make decisions about.
 */
public interface Filter<T>{
    /**
     * Determine whether or not a given object is acceptable. The consequences of this depends on the context.
     * @param item  The item to check for acceptability.
     * @return True if and only if the item passes the filter.
     */
    public boolean accept(T item);
}
